


Flip

by spiralingintochaos (chaoticrandomness)



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Gen, Name Changes, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-06 12:42:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5417513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticrandomness/pseuds/spiralingintochaos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The careers of Korean Mao and Japanese Yuna, from 2004 to 2015.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2004-2005

The video is insanely grainy, and it’s borderline impossible to make out the figure in the rink. It takes several viewings before someone points out that the person doing triple flip-triple toeloop-triple loop combinations, triple axels, and quadruple salchows like they were single jumps is a thirteen-year-old South Korean skater named Yunhei Park.

 

She’s a two-time senior national champion with an elder sister who’s listed as one of her coaches and films some of her more impressive moments to put on the internet for the world to see.

 

The forums are enamoured with her, this crazy, happy girl who skates to _Carmen_ while smiling and throws around triple axels and quadruple salchows and doesn’t seem to have any idea that she’s in a nation with absolutely no history of figure skating whatsoever and shouldn’t be doing quadruple jumps.

 

The coming Junior Grand Prix season just got a lot more interesting.

 

* * *

 

Another video comes out a month later about another junior girl. It’s an interview with Japanese Junior Champion Misaki Sato, and her coach Machiko Yamada. Most of it centers around her recovery from the hip injury that caused her to miss Senior Nationals, but there are a few videos of her jumps near the end.

 

Triple loop. Triple salchow-triple toeloop. Triple flip-triple toeloop. Triple lutz-triple toeloop. A few attempts at triple axels and ina bauers into double axel-triple toeloop combinations, and something that looks like a quadruple toeloop.

 

Just like how the first female quadruple salchow was landed by a Japanese junior, so will the first female quadruple toeloop, the media declares. The skater herself rarely speaks, but manages to endear herself to the world despite her shyness and introversion.

 

There are two junior girls on this planet attempting triple axels and quadruple jumps. Both national champions who’ll debut on the Junior Grand Prix in September, and both of them are just a few months too young for the Olympics in Turin.

 

The fans are in for a very interesting ride.

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park debuts on the Junior Grand Prix circuit in Budapest against Aki Sawada, Akiko Kitamura, and Katy Taylor. The fans and watchers have no idea how she’ll do. On the one hand, she clearly has the technical content and expressiveness to win, but on the other hand, this is also her first year competing on the senior level, and she’s also from a tiny federation with absolutely no influence whatsoever.

 

These concerns are assuaged when she wins the event by over ten points and a video goes up of her freeskate the next day.  It displays a girl in a violet dress skating a light and airy program to music from a ballet about dolls falling in love with each other, complete with an attempted triple axel and a one-handed biellmann spin. There’s a note on the bottom of the video which says that she stumbled out of her combination in the short program, and a cute photo of her with Aki Sawada.

 

Regardless of the stumble and her age, Yunhei Park is still the first Korean ladies’ skater to both medal and win an ISU event, and the fans are impressed. Their attention turns to Misaki Sato a week later, who debuts in America.

 

Instead of a video, she gets an article, which mentions that she won the event over Kimmie Meissner, skated to a waltz in her short program and music from Yentl in her freeskate, and did a triple flip-triple toeloop along with seven other triples during the competition. The quadruple toeloop was seen in practice, but she left it out of the program out of fear of reinjuring herself.

 

“I want to medal at the Olympics.” she says, the picture of quiet steely determination.

 

The fans attempt to compare a video to an article and hope for more images or videos of these wonderkinds, but all they get are scores and the Junior Grand Prix standings, where the two of them are the top two qualifiers to the Final.

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park defeats Misaki Sato by 0.23 of a point in the short program at the Final, 54.34 points to 54.11. South Korea actually has a chance of winning its first Junior Grand Prix Final gold medal, and the fans are excited for what the free will bring.

 

Videos of the short program also turn up on the internet, and the two programs couldn’t be more different from each other. One is of an extrovert smiling her way through _Carmen_ , and the other is of an introvert moving like water to _Valse Triste_. Both of them land triple lutzes and triple loops and have a unique spin position somewhere in the program, and most of the fans expect the free to be a close competition.

 

But Misaki Sato defeats Yunhei Park by twenty points in the freeskate and wins the event by a landslide, and South Korea ends the event with a silver instead. The videos show up the next day, and the fans finally learn how that came to be.

 

Misaki Sato attempted a quadruple toeloop in her freeskate. It looked rotated, and most of the audience thought that it was rotated, for the video was filled with applause when she landed it.

 

Yunhei Park apparently also thought that it was rotated, for she started off her freeskate with a quadruple salchow, which she fell on. She then attempted a triple axel, which she also fell on. The rest of the program was fine sans a single pop and a lack of expression, but the second it ended, she burst into tears. Compared to Misaki Sato’s six triples and one downgraded quad, it was a mess.

 

The fans hope for redemption and glory and happiness for both of them at Junior Worlds and Senior Nationals, and for clean triple-triples and triple axels and quads. It’s just an off day, most of them say, and she’ll get better. Besides, this is just the first step in the rivalry between these two junior girls.

 

There’s also a cute photo of the two of them at the banquet with Yunhei’s older sister, and most fans hope that the two girls will be able to maintain their friendship and status as friendly rivals.

 

The nationalists, on the other hand, hope that the girls will eventually hate each other.

 

* * *

 

Unfortunately, no one takes video of Korean Nationals in the first year people actually care about it. Yunhei wins the event for the third time in a row, and reports from people watching say that she landed a triple lutz-triple loop combination in her short program and a triple flip-triple loop combination and a triple axel in her freeskate.

 

There’s also no video of Japanese Nationals, which significantly more people care about this year after Shizuka Arakawa’s World title and Misaki Sato’s dominance of the junior circuit. The spectators say that Arakawa withdrew and Miki Ando won and Misaki attempted another quadruple toeloop in the freeskate, which might’ve been underrotated.

 

Regardless of the lack of videos, the two girls go into Kitchener as the favorites for the junior world title, with the eyes of Korea and Japan and multiple fans on them. Misaki ends up in qualifying round A, Yunhei ends up in qualifying round B, and videos actually show up of the girls’ freeskates.

 

The lack of pressure does wonders for little girls, for both of them score over 100 points and land difficult jumps. Both of them skate to similarly-lyrical programs, one a light romance and the other a dark elegy. The fans are impressed with the girls’ artistic abilities, but a few harp on their lack of range and how Yunhei flutzes and Misaki lips and that the quads were underrotated and that this is why the judging system should get repealed.

 

Everyone else just wants to watch the short program, and may the best girl win. They expect a close competition between the two, but nerves end up running their course again, for Yunhei falls on her triple lutz, rendering her unable to do a combination, and ends up in sixth place.

 

Misaki skates a clean program and scores slightly over sixty points for it, eight points more than the second-place finisher and twelve more than Yunhei. The way she’ll lose the gold is if she completely bombs, and she’s been so consistent this season, that most people can’t even fathom the possibility of Misaki Sato bombing and losing the gold.

 

She skates third in the final group for the freeskate, and Yunhei skates last. The fans hope that she’ll do well and that Yunhei won’t succumb to the pressure of closing off the event, for many others have faltered in her position.

 

Their concerns are doused when Misaki skates a freeskate with one rotated quadruple toeloop and six clean triples and receives massive amounts of applause from the crowd in Kitchener. They’re even further assuaged when Yunhei pulls out all of the stops in her freeskate and skates with abandon and freedom, throwing all caution to the wind in an attempt to win. And she does win the freeskate with slightly over 120 points, but finishes second overall and the audience is treated to watching her mood go from jubilation to abject misery.

 

She does get better in the post-event press conference, where she’s accompanied by a calm Misaki Sato and a pair of interpreters.

 

“I would like to have her consistency.” she says.

 

“I would like to have your health in exchange for that.” Misaki answers, and the rest of the conference reads as friendly banter between two thirteen-year-old girls, one who wants a better loop and the other a more consistent lutz, and all thoughts of nationalism and rivalry are forgotten.

 

The fans end the season with questions and concerns. They wonder if Misaki’s going to remain uninjured and if Yunhei will develop consistency and if both girls’ jumps will survive puberty and if they’ll move up to the Senior Grand Prix in the Olympic year.

  
There are millions of questions, and no answers. 


	2. 2005-2006

Yunhwa Park posts a note on a video that she and her sister are moving to Toronto, Canada to train at the Cricket Club with Brian Orser. The note also mentions that she’s worked with him in the past, and that she wants her sister to smile again. 

 

A video comes up a few days later of Yunhei doing lutzes. Single lutzes, double lutzes, triple lutzes with double and triple loops on the end, a series of brackets into lutzes of varying quality and rotation, and something that looks like a triple lutz-triple toeloop combination, but the video cuts to Orser before they can see her land it. 

 

Orser says that they’re doing a lot of work on stabilizing her lutz and getting it on the correct edge, and that she’s remaining on the Junior Grand Prix circuit for a second year. She’s keeping her short program and getting a new freeskate to Ralph Vaughan Williams  _ The Lark Ascending,  _ and that they’re not focusing on Turin at all, since South Korea didn’t qualify a single slot to the Olympics and she’s not even old enough to go. 

 

“After she got used to living in Toronto, she became quite possibly the happiest girl I’ve ever met, and I don’t want her to backslide.” he says, and the fans are relieved. 

 

This new situation can only lead to fortune, they think. 

* * *

Misaki Sato debuts her new short program at a local Japanese competition and scores 71.95 points. A few fans are whipped up into a frenzy, but most of them are aware that these competitions tend to have rather inflated scores and that a grain of salt should be taken. 

 

But then a video comes out of a girl skating an elegant yet intense tango with an ina bauer into a double axel and a triple lutz in the second half, and the fans start wondering if the 71.95 was actually deserved. 

 

Unfortunately, she withdraws from the freeskate, but mentions in the post-competition interview that she’s competing at the Grand Prix events in China and France, and that her freeskate is to the Arabian Dance from the  _ Nutcracker.  _

 

“It doesn’t really make any difference, being the first woman to land a quadruple toeloop. I thought that it would, but it actually doesn’t.” she says, before the interviewer starts asking her about the issue of the Olympics and age limits. 

 

She says that she doesn’t care that she’s not old enough, for her goal is to get to 2010 and she wasn’t expecting to be seen as a potential contender for Japan’s Olympic team so early. The interviewer brings up that many of her fans want the age limit to be changed after watching she skate, which causes her to start staring in shock. 

 

“...tell them that I don’t know if I want them to do anything like that, and I’m… honestly, I’m a bit surprised, to have so many fans.” she answers, before the interviewer turns the topic to something less embarrassing and the interview ends with her mentioning that she tried to teach herself Korean off the internet. 

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park, once again, starts her season in the first Junior Grand Prix event against Aki Sawada and Katy Taylor. The difference is that this time she’s the heavy favorite to win, despite her occasional meltdowns in the past season.

 

Like last season, she wins the event by over ten points, and her sister puts up videos of her programs on the internet. Unlike last season, she lands a clean triple lutz in both of her programs, and the viewers say that they looks less like flutzes, although it’s hard to tell with how grainy the videos are. 

 

But despite the graininess, the fans are enamoured with her  _ Lark Ascending  _ freeskate, declaring it the perfect vehicle for her grace and lightness. The fact that it leads off with a triple axel and a triple flip-triple loop helps with this impression, and it gets called a masterpiece within minutes. 

 

The only place this girl can fly is up, the fans say. The sky’s the limit for Yunhei Park.

 

A month later, she wins her second Junior Grand Prix event in Sofia, and lands her first triple axel-double toeloop in the freeskate. The rest of the program is marred by a popped lutz and a fall on her opening triple flip, but the choreography of the program still shines through despite the errors. 

 

* * *

 

Misaki Sato starts her season in China against Irina Slutskaya and Shizuka Arakawa. The fans-both those who watch juniors and those who don’t-predict a bronze for her, for the world junior champion is probably not going to surpass two former world champions. 

 

But Arakawa pops her flip and Misaki lands all three triples in her short program to  _ El Tango De Roxanne,  _ and ends up in second place with 62.42 points, surpassing all skaters but Irina Slutskaya. The fans who’ve never seen her before react with shock at how mature she seems; that a fourteen-year-old girl could pull off such a tango without the program looking too old for her. 

 

She deserves higher component scores, they say. The system still holds down skaters who are just up from the junior level, and should be fixed or abolished. They keep clamoring after she’s defeated in the freeskate by her countrywoman yet still finishes second overall, for it was a clean and expressive program with more difficulty than Arakawa’s with a quad in it, even though it was called as underrotated by the judges. 

 

A week later, she skates in France against Shizuka Arakawa and Sasha Cohen, and the fans have no idea how she’ll do against them. On the one hand, she did beat Arakawa last week, but that was also because Arakawa screwed up her flip in the short program and Cohen is a complete wild card. 

The fans expect either a bronze or a silver. But Misaki Sato ends up winning the gold instead, after performing a clean rendition of both her short program and her freeskate. They also end up with video of her freeskate, which is an intricate display of ina bauers and spread eagles and clean triple and quadruple jumps. 

 

It’s a wonder that she can skate this program without it looking too old for her, they say. This is her version of  _ Salome,  _ and she’s clearly good enough to go to the Olympics, so why can’t she? 

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park and Misaki Sato both win their respective Grand Prix Finals. 

 

On the junior level, the win was expected. On the senior level, the win was most definitely not, and sets off a cavalcade of people clamouring for the age rules to be changed to let Misaki Sato skate in Turin. 

 

No one brings up Yunhei Park in these debates at all, even though they probably should, according to some of the fans. Her scores on the junior circuit would’ve caused her to medal on the senior circuit, she has a triple axel and a quadruple salchow on the backburner, and her artistry is just as good as Misaki’s. 

 

Is it because she’s not from a strong Federation? Is it because she’s Korean? 

 

Most of the fans ignore the trolls and enjoy the girls, for the JSF probably isn’t powerful enough to waive the age rules for a single girl, regardless of how good she is. This has absolutely nothing to do with Japan and Korea’s historical animosity, for the girls are friends and politics has nothing to do with art. 

 

They have no idea how crazy this little fan-war is going to get.

 

* * *

 

Misaki Sato and Yunhei Park end their season at the 2006 Junior World Championships in Ljubljana, right after an insanely anti-climatic ladies’ competition in Turin. Both of them come in as favorites for the title, and the fans assume that Misaki will win again. 

 

But consistency has to falter sometime or another, and she ends up stumbling out of her combination in the short program while Yunhei throws a triple axel-double toeloop and lands it cleanly. The same thing occurs in the freeskate, and Yunhei Park wins South Korea’s first Junior World title. 

 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened in Vancouver.” one of the reporters says in the post-competition interview between Yunhei and Misaki, who are playing what looks like a game of tic-tac-toe on a notecard. 

 

“I would like for that to happen.” 

 

“Me too. Let’s do this again at the Olympics.” 


	3. 2006-2007

Misaki Sato and Yunhei Park are finally age-eligible for both the ISU Championships and the Grand Prix Series, and the fans cannot wait to see them fill the void left by Slutskaya and Kwan and Cohen. 

 

After the initial announcement that the former is competing in America and Japan while the latter is competing in Canada and France, plenty of news comes out about Yunhei. Her short program is to Chopin’s  _ Nocturne,  _ she’s keeping her freeskate, and her lutzes are getting closer to being on the outside edge. She’s working on regaining her triple salchow and backended triple toeloops, and there’s even a video of her and her sister skating to  _ Somewhere Over The Rainbow  _ with the Cricket Club’s younger students. 

 

In contrast, the only rumors floating around Misaki are that she’s switched coaches to Rafael Arutyunyan to escape the constant media attention in Japan, and that she’s injured. This has the accidental side-effect of reviving the Olympic age debate from last season, for there’s always that chance of her never going back to the same level and getting swallowed up by the depth of Japan’s talent pool. 

 

If she had gone to Turin and won in Turin, she would at least have a place in the fandom’s memory. But now, she’ll become a burnt-out star, a prime example of what could’ve been if fate had been kinder to her. 

 

Yet Misaki Sato doesn’t withdraw from Skate America and skates a clean short program to  _ Die Fledermaus  _ with a triple flip-triple toeloop combination and triple lutz. The only signs that she might not be the same consistent girl are her uncharacteristically high sit spins and her rather stony-faced interpretation of the waltz, but it could be worse and she’ll get better. 

 

And then she falls three times in her freeskate to  _ Czardas  _ and ends up in third place.

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park debuts in her adopted nation a week after Misaki Sato’s unexpected, injury-borne, bronze-medaling performance in hers. Reports from the watchers say that she’s landing all sorts of difficult combinations in practice, and her new short program is a great fit for her. 

 

She has the capability to land every type of triple-triple combination possible, they say, and her programs are expressive and sylph-like and ethereal. This move to Canada has done wonders for her, and this debut is going to be electrifying. 

 

Despite leading off the short program, she still manages to win the segment with her airy performance. Someone puts a video of it up on the internet, of her floating her way through intricate choreography and triple flip-triple loop combinations, and the fans are enthralled. 

 

She should’ve scored higher, they say. Just because she’s a Korean skater debuting on the senior level doesn’t mean that she has bad artistry, and the judges still hold down component scores, forcing the skaters to suffer. 

 

And then she pops three jumps in her freeskate and finishes the event with a bronze. 

 

* * *

 

Yunhei Park wins her second Grand Prix event with a pair of clean performances. Misaki Sato does the same on home ice, and breaks the world record score to do so. They qualify in third and fourth place for the Final, and videos come out for the fans to watch and mull over. 

 

The trolls take advantage of this to launch their first major attack on the fanbase, over artistic range and jumping technique and the very fraught history between Japan and Korea. Mostly, they’re ignored, but they attract a few people to their cause of mentioning that Yunhei has no range and Misaki has no expression and neither of the girls have clean jumps anyways, so supporting one of them is like condoning mass-murder. 

 

Everyone else just watches the videos and wonders how they’ll stack up against each other at the same competition. Misaki has the higher personal best score, but she was also on home ice and her programs pale in comparison to the ones she had last season and Yunhei’s. Yunhei has better programs and a harder layout, but she also is less consistent, flutzes occasionally, and hasn’t been to the event before. Besides, at least they have both technical and artistic prowess at this age, and they’ll be able to improve artistically as they mature. 

 

When the Grand Prix Final finally comes, the first two skaters are rather anti-climactic. Then Yunhei skates an ethereal rendition of her short program, and goes into the lead by about five points. Misaki follows her, also skates cleanly and confidently, and takes the lead. It looks like she’s completely rebounded from her injuries, and she’ll defeat her primary rival. 

 

But the next day comes, the freeskate occurs, and she closes the event by falling three times and falling to second place. In contrast, Yunhei skates an airy and perfect program, and ends up winning South Korea’s first Grand Prix Final title. 

 

* * *

 

Misaki Sato rebounds from her abysmal Grand Prix Final performance by winning her first Japanese senior title. She withdraws from the gala, and gives an interview after the competition, where she talks about fragility and injury and how she used to overtrain when she was a child.

 

“The biggest piece of advice I’d give to skaters is to not try to skate through injuries.” she says, before confirming that she will compete in Tokyo as Japan’s ladies’ frontrunner. 

 

Yunhei Park doesn’t compete at Korean Nationals for the first time, due to travelling costs and the fact that she’s the only skater there who has a chance of getting remotely near a medal or even making it to the freeskate. She also gives an interview, and talks about moving and lutz edges and random daily events. 

 

“I miss it, Korea. I like it here, living with my sister, but I want to see my mom again.” she says, before Orser takes over the interview to discuss her goals of world and Olympic medals. 

 

Going into the world championships, the two of them are among the frontrunners for gold. If they both skate clean, it’ll be a sight to behold, but Misaki’s been injured and Yunhei has occasional bouts of inconsistency, so who knows what’ll happen at the event? 

 

It’s a nerve-wracking two months for the fanbase.

 

* * *

 

During the short program, Yunhei skates perfectly, floats her way through Chopin, and breaks the short program world record score by a tenth of a point while Misaki pops her triple lutz and ends the segment in fifth place. 

 

During the free skate, Misaki skates perfectly, lands a quadruple toeloop in her freeskate, and breaks her own free skate world record score while Yunhei falls twice in the second half of her freeskate and accidentally does an extra combination. 

 

They end the season as the world silver and bronze medalists, but each one broke a world record in one program and imploded in the other. 

 

The future of figure skating is in very good hands. 


	4. 2007-2008

Misaki Sato and Yunhei Park end up revealing their programs on a Japanese joint interview dedicated to delving into the personalities of the two girls at the center of the figure skating world’s newest rivalry. Luckily, someone records the broadcast, and puts it on the internet for all to see. 

 

Misaki is skating to  _ Ladies In Lavender  _ and  _ Miss Saigon,  _ and has started working with David Wilson and Tatiana Tarasova to improve her expressive abilities. Yunhei’s skating to a Chopin etude and  _ Fantasie-Impromptu,  _ and she says that it doesn’t matter that both pieces are by the same person, for they don’t sound alike and his music is really pretty. 

 

“I want my skating to be as pretty as his music, and for people 200 years from now to still remember that I existed, I guess….” she says, before the interviewer switches the topic to if either girl idolizes any other figure skaters. 

 

Yunhei looks up to her elder sister and Midori Ito, and wants to become the Korean version of the latter by inspiring other people from her home nation to skate. Misaki looks up to Michelle Kwan, and was even inspired to skate by her. 

 

“I watched her programs at the Olympics so many times that I had them memorized. Her skating was so mesmerising…. and I want to be like that.” she says, before the interviewer changes the topic to something not related to skating. 

 

Misaki almost quit skating after breaking her leg as a child, and used to sing. Yunhei followed her sister into skating after quitting ballet classes, and wants to learn how to cook. There’s also a series of yes-or-no questions with some paddles, and the program ends in laughter and happiness. 

 

“I hope that I can see you again sometime soon.” 

 

“Let’s make chocolate then, okay? Good luck this season!” 

 

* * *

 

The ISU passes a resolution requiring all flips and lutzes that take off on the wrong edge to be called and given negative grades of execution. This does not get brought up in the joint interview between Misaki and Yunhei, even though some think that it should’ve been. 

 

If you have two skaters, one who flutzes and one who lips, shouldn’t they have to adjust their programs to avoid the mandatory deduction for cheating the jump? Although Yunhei’s been in the process of fixing her lutz edge for about two seasons and Misaki’s flips are mostly on an inside edge, so maybe the question was never asked because neither girl has a major edge problem. 

 

The edges do trip up both girls at their first short program performance of the season, along with a pop. However, both of them rebound to win the event by about twenty points, and go on to win their second event by an even larger margin. 

 

Misaki’s uninjured now, and her sit spins are back to their normal height. Yunhei’s consistency is gradually improving, and careful examination of her lutzes puts the majority of them on the outside edge. Both girls express melancholy moods in their short program, but one remains melancholy and the other switches to being airy in the freeskate. 

 

The Final will be a show for the fans, even those who praise one girl and demean the other.

 

* * *

 

Misaki Sato skates second-to-last in the Final’s short program, is clean except for popping her triple flip into a double, albeit one with a triple toeloop on the end, and goes into the lead by six points. 

 

Yunhei Park skates right after her, and flows through her short program like wind. On the surface, she is perfectly clean, but she somehow forgot to perform her triple lutz, and ends up in last place. 

 

Most of the fans chalk up the errors to one-off incidents, and note that the performances didn’t suffer from the jump errors. Only six points separate first and last place, and less than a point is between bronze and sixth, so the end result could look completely different from this table of results. 

 

Anything can happen tomorrow, and a very large amount of things do occur the next day. 

 

Firstly, Yunhei Park leads off the freeskate with the hardest program ever performed by a female figure skater and shatters her personal best score with it. Secondly, Misaki Sato closes off the event by skating a freeskate with two falls in it, but her short program lead enables her to defeat Yunhei by thirty-four hundredths of a point. 

 

Thirdly, the fans go into an uproar over this result, with half declaring Misaki’s freeskate score inflated due to the falls, and the other half declaring Yunhei’s short program score inflated due to skipping an entire element.

 

Fourthly, the event ends with another joint interview between the two girls. 

 

“Why did I do it? I guess because I thought that since I had nothing to lose, I might as well throw in a quad and start improvising the entire rest of my jumping layout…. so I guess it worked?” 

 

“It was a really nice performance. I don’t know if I’ll be able to skate in the gala, though….” 

 

* * *

 

Misaki Sato withdraws from Japanese Nationals with a hip injury, and confirms that she’ll be out for the rest of the season. 

 

“Last year, I tried to skate through herniating a disk in my back, which didn’t really work out…. so I’m going to get surgery and then figure out where I’ll go from there.” she says, before the interview switches to Arutyunyan discussing her life in America and work ethic. 

 

“I had to convince her to pull out of Nationals and get surgery. She kept telling me that she would be fine.” 

 

This information puts the vast majority of her programs throughout the past two seasons in a new light, for it’s one thing to skate through an unknown injury and another thing to keep putting out mostly world-champion caliber programs with airy triple jumps and fluid expression while suffering from a potentially debilitating set of injuries. The fans hope that she gets better and doesn’t end up retiring at a young age, and the trolls that claim that she’s faking injury are mostly ignored. 

 

Her withdrawal from the entire second half of the season also throws a wrench into Worlds, but Japan’s still almost guaranteed to get three spots. Yunhei Park also ends up as the heavy favorite for the title, for with her chief rival out of the picture, there’s no one who can come close to her. 

 

And despite a fall on a quadruple salchow attempt in her freeskate, she becomes the first South Korean skater to win a world title. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't expecting to be using this account again, but I had an idea and wanted people to read it...


End file.
